Description

40.6cm x 55.9cm: acrylic on canvas

Artwork is sold unstretched

Jade Buttler

Jade was born in Adelaide. Her mother is from Balgo community and her father, Sammy Butler, is from Tjukurla. Jade began painting with Balgo art centre in 2013, before moving to Tjukurla to be with her father’s family. As well as being a painter, Jade is a superstar arts worker, and recently has been learning to stretch canvas. Jade likes to paint rockholes, bush bananas and sand hills from her grandfather’s country Nyinmi (west of Kiwirrkurra) where she used to live when little with her grandparents. The family then went to Kiwirrkurra, but flooding forced the family to move to Balgo, and they made a home in Balgo. Jade was taught to paint by her mother. Grandfather passed away a long time ago and so she paints his country to learn his story from her elders and family.

Minyma Tjukurla

The young women are travelling around the country near Tjukurla with the older ladies. They are learning many things about where to collect special grasses and flowers and other types of bush tucker. This knowledge is recorded in the motifs and symbols which have been used in Western Desert visual culture for countless generations, and which the artists now deploy in the new medium of acrylic painting.